So recently, I had a tenant who had just moved to the area and wanted a 6-month lease.Normally I don’t accept 6-month leases but she said she would pre-pay the entire lease including the security deposit and I accepted. A month before the lease came up for renewal, I spoke with the tenant about renewing and sounded very positive about signing a new 1-year lease. She even went so far as to request that I send the lease for her to sign.

The next phone message I got from her 2 days later, was that she had moved to another house with about 25 days left on her lease. Talk about flaky. I should also mention that she placed this call on a public holiday when she knew she wouldn’t have to talk to me directly. Now that’s what I call flaky AND cowardly.

The very next day after the public holiday, I was contacted by an ex-tenant who (ready for this?) moved out at the end of her lease because she determined that she couldn’t afford to pay her rent. This is quite a shocker because most tenants seem to want a big dramatic showdown because THEY can’t pay THEIR rent, like it’s my fault or something. This was not the case with this ex-tenant. In fact, she has referred her friends to me as potential tenants because, “…they have their act together.” Let me tell you, dear reader, it is absolute LANDLORD GOLD when you have good ex-tenants pre-screening potential new tenants and referring them to you.

The punchline of this story is that this ex-tenant called to find out if I had any units available for rent. “Why yes! Yes I do!”, I answered. I have to say that I couldn’t be happier with this situation. I always treat my tenants like valued customers provided that they keep up their end of the bargain. This time, it paid off in spades!

So if the six month tenant decided to move elsewhere with 25 days left on the lease, does that mean the lease is automatically over? Are they suppose to give you a 30 days notice? How many days between the move-out and move-in did you need to get the rental ready?

The lease did not automatically end when they moved out. They were pre-paid so I let the lease run out while I was getting the place ready. They are supposed to give 30-days notice but they didn’t. It was more like 20 days. Luckily I had a previous tenant who was ready to move in right away so “ready time” was like 1 week.

I should add that this kind of “turnaround time” is highly unusual hence the post about it.